In recent years, an operation way has been increasingly employed in which a large number of computers (servers and the like) are installed in a single room and are managed collectively, as in the case of a data center for managing and operating customer information, a computer center for handling a large amount of jobs of its own company, or the like (hereinafter, these centers are collectively referred to as “data centers”).
In a data center, a large number of racks are installed in a room and multiple computers are housed in each of the racks. Under such circumstances, a large amount of heat is generated from the computers to raise the temperature inside each of the racks, which is a factor for causing a malfunction or a breakdown. To prevent this, while the computers are being cooled by cool air inside the room taken into each rack by a fan or the like, the temperature inside the room is controlled by using an air conditioner so as to prevent the temperature inside the room from rising due to the heat released from the racks.
In this regard, in order to save power consumption in a data center while avoiding a malfunction or breakdown of computers due to the heat, it is preferably to measure a temperature distribution in the data center when needed and to control an air conditioning facility and the like appropriately according to the measurement result. To measure the temperature distribution inside the data center, it may be possible to install a large number of temperature sensors such as temperature sensors IC or thermocouples inside and outside the racks, for example. In this case, however, a huge number of temperature sensors may be needed. Thus, it produces a problem of an increase in costs required for installation and maintenance work of the temperature sensors. In addition, a rate of occurrence of failures rises with an increase in the number of temperature sensors, which brings about another problem of a lack of sufficiently high reliability.
For this reason, it has been heretofore proposed to use an optical fiber as temperature sensors in order to measure temperatures of a large number of positions (measurement points) in a data center, a factory, office or the like.    PATENT DOCUMENT 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. 2003-14554    PATENT DOCUMENT 2: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. 2003-57126    PATENT DOCUMENT 3: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. S62-110160    PATENT DOCUMENT 4: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. H07-12655    PATENT DOCUMENT 5: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. H02-123304    PATENT DOCUMENT 6: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. 2002-267242    PATENT DOCUMENT 7: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. H05-11840    PATENT DOCUMENT 8: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. H09-89529    PATENT DOCUMENT 9: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication NO. 2008-282123    NON-PATENT DOCUMENT 1: Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., PRESS RELEASE “Fujitsu Develops Technology Enabling Real-time Multiple-Point Temperature Measurement” on 4 Apr., 2008
A temperature measurement apparatus using an optical fiber as sensors (hereinafter, referred to as an optical fiber temperature measurement apparatus) detects a temperature distribution in a length direction of the optical fiber. For this reason, when an optical fiber is laid inside a data center, an office or a factory, it is importance to know where and how the optical fiber is laid, and to associate each measurement point recognized by the optical fiber temperature measurement apparatus with an actual measurement point.
When the number of measurement points is small, it may be possible to create data by associating measurement points recognized by the optical fiber temperature measurement apparatus under the condition where the optical fiber is heated, with their respective actual measurement points. When the number of measurement points is large, however, the above method is not realistic, because requiring a huge length of working time. In addition, even though the equipment in the data center is changed depending on a demand which changes from time to time, the above method cannot easily respond to the change in the equipment.